


Running Noses

by johnny cade (johnnycake)



Series: Rebellious Causes [2]
Category: Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sickness, implied past sexual abuse, talk of past abuse, trans!Plato
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 01:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16052531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnnycake/pseuds/johnny%20cade
Summary: Plato gets sick and Jim takes care of him





	Running Noses

**Author's Note:**

> WOW IT HAS BEEN A HOT MINUTE SINCE I WROTE FOR THIS FANDOM!!
> 
> someone commented on one of rebel without a cause fics and i remembered i have like...4 other ideas for this fandom, so i decided just to write em

Jim knew something was wrong when Plato didn’t show up for the agreed upon time for their hangout that day. They were supposed to go to the movies together today and Jim was waiting in his car for Plato to arrive. Plato walked everywhere and Jim had offered to pick him up, but Plato liked walking and had declined. Now Jim was drumming his fingers on his steering wheel, whipping his head every which way, looking for Plato, but he was nowhere to be seen.

 _Maybe he’s just late,_ a voice in his head whispered.

But Jim knew already that wasn’t true. Plato was punctual. He was never late. Not even five minutes late. And when Jim looked at the clock on his car dashboard and saw it was nearly fifteen minutes past their agreed upon hangout time, he immediately began to worry. Plato was known for running away when things got tough. Maybe his mother had come home and said something to him. It wouldn’t be the first time. And though Jim knew the places Plato tended to run away to, it hadn’t escaped him that there might be places he ran to that he didn’t know about.

Turning the key in the ignition, Jim decided he would start at Plato’s house. Even if his mother were home, he knew that Plato’s maid, Pam, would be home as well. She was more a mother to Plato than his own mother was and if he’d run away, she’d be the first to know about it.

However, when he reached the large house in the nicer part of town, everything seemed to be calm. There were no police there, Pam wasn’t sitting on the front stoop, looking harassed and worried, and somehow that made Jim worry all the more. If Plato hadn’t run away and something hadn’t happened at home, then why wasn’t he showing up to the movie theater? Why hadn’t he at least called him hours ago before he’d left home to let him know that something was preventing him from meeting up with him? That really wasn’t like him at all.

Parking his car in front of the house, Jim stared up at it. It was a beautiful house, white with pillars out front and large windows on every floor. He could see silk curtains behind some of the windows and nice furniture in the rooms where the lights were on. He’d been inside Plato’s house maybe once or twice and, though it looked nice from his current vantage point, the whole place felt cold, sterile, unwelcoming. He knew it was because Plato’s mother cared more about appearances than making it a nice place for her son to live, even though he was the one who was in it most of the time.

Closing and locking his car behind him, Jim went up to the door and rang the bell and wasn’t surprised when Pam answered the door. He smiled at her. She was a kind woman. It wasn’t fair people with her color skin were treated so poorly just because of their appearance.

“Oh James,” Pam said, smiling warmly at him. “It’s you. John’ll be glad to see you.”

“He’s home?” he asked.

Pam nodded and then drew her brows together in what seemed to be concern. She looked behind her up the grand staircase and said, “He’s real sick. Must’ve been out in the cold for too long, poor lamb. You know how easily he gets cold. Must’ve been when his mother came home last week. He don’t like bein’ around when she is.”

Jim felt simultaneously relieved and concerned at the same time. Relieved that he hadn’t run off or worse. Worried because it seemed that Plato was getting sick all the time lately. It was getting closer and closer to winter, though, and he figured that had to be the reason. Pam wasn’t wrong when she said that the cold bothered him more than most people. And if he were running off out in fifty degree weather, it was no wonder he was sick.

“Can I see him?” he asked Pam.

“Oh yes, sir,” she said, stepping back to let him in. “Like I said, he’ll be real happy to see you.”

“Thanks,” Jim said, walking past Pam with a smile and nod before heading up the stairs.

No one knew about his and Plato’s relationship. Pam did, but she was the only one. They could trust her more than they could trust their own folks. She didn’t judge them. In fact, she was the most non-judgmental person Jim had ever met. It was another reason he was so infuriated by the way literally everyone else treated her.

Plato’s room was the last one on the left end of the hallway and Jim walked down their slowly and quietly, not wanting to startle him. He peaked into the room and saw Plato on the bed, the blankets pulled up around him, looking for all intents and purposes asleep. He looked so much more peaceful in sleep than in waking and Jim immediately wanted to curse everyone who had ever made him so scared he couldn’t feel that peace when awake.

Plato started awake when Jim closed the door and sat bolt upright, looking for a moment scared and confused. Then he saw Jim and his eyes fluttered shut in relief as he said quietly, “Oh, it’s you. I thought – I thought you were someone else.”

Jim sat down on the edge of Plato’s bed, tucking the blankets back in around him, pressing on his shoulder, encouraging him to lay back down. “Who’d you think I was?” he asked quietly.

Plato settled back into the pillows. “My mother,” he said quietly. “Or my father. Neither one of them were very good to me. My mother yells a lot, but my father...he does worse things.”

This wasn’t something Jim had heard before. He knew he didn’t get along with his mother. He knew of the horrible things she said to him, but before tonight he’d only ever heard good things about Plato’s father. It made him wonder if that was just a front he put on to keep people from guessing the truth. He knew he did the same sort of thing with his own parents.

“What does your father do?” he asked quietly.

Plato shrugged, closing his eyes again. “Lots of things. Mostly at night. When my mother and Pam are asleep and can’t catch him doin’ it. He wanted a girl and when I said I was a boy, he tried to make me a girl by doin’ things that men and woman do together to make a girl.” He let out a soft sigh, settling back against the pillows again and falling once more asleep.

That was more than enough for Jim to guess the rest and he felt sick to his stomach at the thought. He didn’t get along with his parents very well either, but at least they’d never done anything like that to him. For the first time in his life, Jim felt lucky to have his parents.

Trying not to think about all of the horrors Plato had been through in his life, he pulled the extra blanket at the end of the bed up around Plato. He kicked off his shoes and shrugged off his jacket before crawling beneath the blankets and wrapping his arms around Plato from behind. He felt warm, almost hot from fever and Jim wondered vaguely just how sick he was.

 _I’ll keep him safe,_ he thought as he closed his eyes, starting to drift off as well. _I’ll make sure no one ever hurts him ever again. I swear it._

He was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow. Plato next to him was a better sedative than all the alcohol in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm gonna try to get the other ideas out as well, so watch for those!! i'll be writin' em in between my outsiders stuff!! if you got any ideas for this fandom pls lemme know cause i love writin' for these two <3
> 
> i should also probably mention now that all of my fics are supposed to have trans!Plato in them because that's how we roll in this house.


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